The Stepford Wives !!TOP!!
The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical "feminist horror"[1] novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer, wife and young mother who suspects that something in Stepford's environment is changing the wives from free-thinking, intelligent women into compliant wives dedicated solely to homemaking. As her friends slowly transform Joanna realises the horrific truth.
The Stepford Wives
The premise involves the married men of the fictional Fairfield County town of Stepford, Connecticut and their fawning, submissive, impossibly beautiful wives. The protagonist is Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer newly arrived from New York City with her husband and children, eager to start a new life. As time goes on, she becomes increasingly disturbed by the submissive wives of Stepford who seem to lack free will, especially when she sees her once independent-minded friends, fellow new arrivals to Stepford, turn into mindless, docile housewives following a romantic weekend. Her husband, who seems to be spending more and more time at meetings of the local men's association, mocks her fears.
As the story progresses, Joanna becomes convinced that the wives of Stepford are being poisoned or brainwashed into submission by the men's club. She visits the library and researches the pasts of Stepford's wives, discovering that some of the women were once feminist activists and very successful professionals and that the leader of the men's club is a former Disney engineer and others are artists and scientists, capable of creating lifelike robots. Her friend Bobbie helps her investigate, going so far as to write to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to inquire about possible toxins in Stepford. However, eventually, Bobbie is also transformed into a docile housewife and has no interest in her previous activities.
There are many feminist themes in The Stepford Wives. The novel tackles the role of women in the nuclear family and the control they have over their bodies by allowing the readers to observe what happens in Stepford when Joanna moves in.[3] Before the women in Stepford turned into lifeless, docile robots, they were avid activists and successful career women who had lives outside of being a wife. However, the men in Stepford were opposed to this, turning their wives into robots and reducing their only purposes in life down to serving their husbands.
The theme of consent is tackled in The Stepford Wives franchise. The reason why the men in Stepford make their wives into submissive robots is that they are afraid of losing control over their wives. The similarity between sex robots and the women in Stepford is that they are both lifeless and docile, hence the men do not need consent in order to fulfill their sexual desire.[4]
A 1980 television sequel was titled Revenge of the Stepford Wives. In this film, instead of being androids, the wives underwent a brainwashing procedure and then took pills that kept them hypnotized. In the end, the wives broke free of their conditioning and a mob of them killed the mastermind behind the conspiracy.
In a 1987, a television sequel/remake titled The Stepford Children, both the wives and the children of the male residents were replaced by drones. It ended with the members of the conspiracy being killed.
After the trio witness Sarah Sunderson violently dance and then collapse, Joanna argues with Walter about the incident until Walter bluntly informs her that her children barely know her, their marriage is falling apart, and her domineering nature makes people want to kill her. As he tries to walk out of their marriage, Joanna apologizes and agrees to appease him by trying to fit in with the other wives. The next day, Joanna, Bobbie and Roger go to Sarah's home to check up on her, where upon entering, they hear her upstairs, ecstatically screaming during sex with her husband Herb. As they scramble to sneak out, they find a remote control labeled SARAH, discovering a button that causes Sarah's breasts to enlarge and makes her walk backwards robotically.
One evening, Walter and Bobbie's husband Dave go to the Men's Association with Roger and Jerry, but Joanna and Bobbie hire a babysitter and sneak inside to spy on them and the other husbands. They discover a hall filled with family portraits, but Roger catches them and assures them that all is well. The next day, the pair discover Roger's flamboyant clothing, Playbill program from Hairspray, and photo of Orlando Bloom have all been discarded. Jerry tells them to meet him in the town hall and they see Roger, apparently running for State Senate, with a bland look and conformist personality. Joanna wants to leave and Walter agrees, saying they will go the next day. Going into Walter's study, she discovers that all the Stepford wives were once working women in high-power positions.
The next day, Joanna visits Bobbie, noticing that her formerly messy house is spotless. Now blending in with the other Stepford wives, Bobbie says she is a whole new person and the most important thing is her cookbook. While offering to help Joanna change, Bobbie obliviously puts her hand over the stove's burner. Returning to the Men's Association, Joanna finds that in her family picture she now resembles a Stepford wife. Men's Association leader Mike shows how they insert nanochips into their wives' brains to make them Stepford wives. The men corner Joanna and Walter, force them toward the transformation room, but Joanna asks if the new wives really mean it when they tell their husbands that they love them. The next scene shows the Stepford wives, including Joanna, now blonde and dressed in Sunday dresses, at the grocery store.
With Joanna and Walter as special guests, Stepford hosts a formal ball. During the festivities, Joanna distracts Mike and entices him into the garden, while Walter slips away to the transformation room where he destroys the software that programs the women. At the ball, the wives corner their husbands and reveal that Joanna never received the microchip implant. Mike threatens Walter, but Joanna decapitates him with a candlestick, exposing him as a robot. Mike's wife Claire explains that she created Stepford because she, too, was a bitter career-minded woman. When she discovered Mike's affair with her research assistant, she murdered them in a jealous rage. Claire then electrocutes herself by kissing Mike's severed robotic head.
Six months later, in an interview with Larry King, Joanna (who has won six Emmys for producing the hard-hitting documentary Stepford: The Secret of the Suburbs), Roger (who has won his State Senate seat as an Independent) and Bobbie (who has written and published her first book of poetry Wait Until He's Asleep, Then Cut It Off) explain that the Stepford husbands are being retrained to become better people. The closing scene reveals that the wives have now taken over Stepford and have placed their husbands under house arrest, making them complete the same domestic tasks that they had forced the women to do.
Some time later, the artificial Joanna placidly peruses the local supermarket amongst the other glamorously dressed wives. As they make their way through the store, they each vacantly greet one another. During the end credits, photographs show a smiling Walter driving the family car and picking up his new "Stepford Wife" from the supermarket with their children in the backseat.
Tension developed between Forbes and screenwriter Goldman over the casting of Nanette Newman (Forbes' wife) as one of the wives. Goldman felt that the 40 year old Newman's appearance did not match the young provocatively-dressed model-like women he'd scripted for. Forbes responded by instituting contemporary prairie-style dress, complete with frilly aprons, for all the wives. Goldman was also unhappy with re-writes by Forbes - in particular, the ending[14] - which Nanette Newman claimed Forbes had deliberately filmed "in an unreal way, so they were almost like a ballet moving in and out, up and down the aisle."[15] Additional stresses were caused whenactor Peter Masterson secretly called his friend Goldman for input on scenes. Goldman later claimed the film "could have been very strong, but it was rewritten and altered, and I don't think happily."[16]
They seem fishy from the moment Joanna (Katharine Ross) arrives in the cozy suburb of Stepford. They don't seem to do anything much, except keep up their images as perfect housewives and helpmates. They are doggedly devoted to their husbands, they are shapelier than your average female and they are obsessed to the point of frenzy with keeping their houses clean.
In a town where the wives of the local fat, balding and mostly inanely dull men have been character swapped for cooking and cleaning versions of their previous selves, I still find it hard to believe that a man such as Peter Masterson's Walter, the most Walter-ish of Walters, would trade in Katharine Ross's altogether spectacular Joanna for a wife with a clean kitchen and hot dinners on tap.
A really fun and feminist take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Katharine Ross stars as a photographer and mother who moves to Stepford, finding that all the housewives are super pristine, and almost from a different time.
Parents need to know that The Stepford Wives is a thought-provoking sci-f thriller, adapted from Ira Levin's "feminist horror" novel. Katharine Ross and Peter Masterson play Joanna and Walter Eberhart, who move to the idyllic town of Stepford, only to discover things aren't what they seem. The movie has a creepy tone throughout with women depicted as part of the satirical plot of men rewiring them into submissive, obedient wives who are sexually available and eerily docile. Violence is shown when a fire poker is used as a weapon (and draws blood) and a knife is used to see if someone bleeds (they don't). Characters discuss sex -- but never in any graphic detail -- and there is one scene of nudity where a woman's bare breasts are shown under a negligee and a couple are also heard having sex. There are some uses of "bastard" and "ass," and characters drink spirits and smoke cigars. The film led to the term "The Stepford Wife" being integrated into mainstream psyche and a remake was made in 2004, although that film led further into comedy than horror. 041b061a72